Carbon opens $4.9M bid for office project

Carbon County officials are moving forward on plans to construct a three-story office building in Jim Thorpe to help alleviate current congestion in various county offices.

The building, which will include a two-level, 110-space parking garage and 25,000 square feet of office space, will be situated in the current parking lot of the 76 Susquehanna offices and is expected to be completed by early 2020.

On Thursday, the board of commissioners opened the first of approximately seven contract packages for the project.

Slaw Precast of Lehighton submitted the sole bid of $4,912,572 for the precast concrete contract with an alternate bid of $17,000 for natural concrete finish work on the rear, west and south walls of the structure.

Tony Ganguzza, vice president of professional services for Boyle Construction of Allentown, project manager, said the contract includes the first- and second-level parking decks, as well as the shell of the third floor office space.

“This will be the highest contract we see,” he said.

The other contracts will be going out to bid on Monday, with an anticipated opening date to be set in January.

Ganguzza detailed the project time line, which is expected to start in late February with the demolition of 44 Susquehanna St., the former archives and maintenance building.

Mountain excavation

After demolition is complete, excavation of the mountain behind the current parking lot will begin and is expected to take about 60 business days for completion.

Ganguzza said during that time, the contractor for the excavation will remove 40 feet or approximately 20,000 yards of rock from the mountain to make enough space for the building.

The rock excavation is only one of the tricky components of the projects due to the location.

“We will not be blasting due to the proximity of the buildings, the church (St. Mark and John Episcopal Church) and the area in general,” he said. “We will be using a drilling concept, pecking at the rock and pulling it away, which is why it will take 60 business days to do and not 30 business days. It’s a process we need to take our time with and be cautious about.”

Ganguzza said during this portion of the project, there will be a crew there monitoring the vibrations so the historic church or surrounding buildings will not be damaged.

Once excavation is completed in June, concrete footings will be poured and the precast shell will be brought in July.

“The erection of the structure, what you see going vertical, will be sometime in July,” Ganguzza said. The shell should take six to seven weeks to complete.

This portion will include one lane of Route 209 being closed at night for a week in September when the last parts of the precast are being set into place.

“We’re trying to get the bulk of the traffic issues resolved before the fall festival,” Ganguzza said

Commissioner William O’Gurek said that there are “going to be a lot of issues bringing the precast concrete forms in there, moving lines and poles,” and that is why some road closures will be needed.

Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein said the county is working on the issues with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and added that another factor may be the Mansion House Hill rock removal project that was delayed from this year.

From September through the end of the year and into early 2020, the remaining contractors would fit out of the third floor for office space. The anticipated completion date is March 2020.

“We’re taking as much precaution as we can to do the project right and to try and get it done within budget and on schedule,” Ganguzza said.

Nothstein said the timeline is based on trying to minimize the effects to the businesses in Jim Thorpe.

The county will review the bid and either award the contract or reject the bid at next Thursday’s commissioners’ meeting.

Carbon County has been working on building additional office space since 2016 when commissioners refinanced the county’s bonds to free up approximately $7 million for capital projects, including constructing a maintenance building at the upper end of the county parking lot, relocating the archives office to the east side of Jim Thorpe and matching grant requirements for the proposed multiuse fire training facility in Nesquehoning.